Your car’s parts could one day be made by a printer

A small, family-run business has come up with a metal printer that it thinks will transform manufacturing.

The MK1 metal printer works by melting aluminum into a molten form, and then using a magnetic field to eject droplets of the substance onto a moving plate, which maneuvers around to create the desired 3D shape. That differs from other metal printers, which lay down a layer of powdered metal and melt it with a laser or electron beam, a process called powder bed fusion. In this process, there’s a chance that some particles of the powder do not get melted, creating weak spots.

Zack Vader is the CTO and co-founder of Vader Systems and says he came up with the idea of making a metal printer after he failed to find a company that was capable of printing a microturbine generator he needed for a project. So with the help of his father, Scott, and alma mater, the University at Buffalo, he set out to build his own.